Non-Indian domestic teams hurt most by CLT20 cancellation

With the Champions League Twenty20 discontinued due to limited public following, ESPNcricinfo takes a look at how the cancellation of the tournament will affect participating countries and the impact on their revenues.

Why was the CLT20 culled and what is the most significant impact?
The CLT20 was cancelled because of the lack of viability from a broadcaster's perspective. An IPL insider revealed that the tournament was worth almost a billion dollars over ten years but the broadcasters failed to recover even a tenth of that.

The biggest impact following the cancellation of the CLT20 will be felt by non-Indian domestic teams, who have lost out on a three-way income stream. Non-Indian teams in the tournament received participation fees of US$500,000 per team, prize money and US$150,000 per player who chose to turn out for his IPL team instead of his domestic team, in the event that both qualified.

"The CLT20 was a cash cow for international teams," the source told ESPNcricinfo. "For a team like T&T, when a Samuel Badree or Dwayne Bravo is playing for other teams, the money they receive from them would change things immediately. The CLT20 was a game-changer for other teams around the world given the sheer amount of money."

Impact on respective boards

BCCI
Of the three stakeholders - the BCCI, CA and CSA - the Indian board and its teams are the best off. The BCCI will receive US$190 million - more than half the $330 million settlement between the three boards and the broadcaster Star India - and the IPL teams will no longer have to spend thousands of dollars for retaining overseas players for the CLT20. "For Indian franchises, most of the amount would be spent towards retaining the services of a Pollard or de Villiers," the source said.

Cricket Australia
CA is the next biggest beneficiary. It will receive US$80 million following the closure of CLT20 and has a television rights deal to cushion it against other loss. Cricket Australia made somewhere in the region of US$25 million in each edition of the Champions League, and in the early seasons of the Big Bash League, it was this money that allowed the BBL project head Mike McKenna to say "domestic Twenty20 operations" were running at a profit.

The broadcast networks, Channel Nine and Channel Ten, alleviated CA's reliance on this revenue in 2013. The deal with Channel Ten for the BBL alone is worth $20 million per season, while Nine's investment of $500 million over five years also strengthened the board's position and the funds that could be doled out to the states and their BBL teams.

Cricket South Africa
The South African board will receive US$60 million from the settlement but its franchises, who operate as separate companies to the national body, are concerned about their own affairs. CSA will split the participation fees of the two teams who took part in the tournament between all six of their franchises, who received R350,000 (US$28.778) a year.

Several franchise CEOs described the funds coming in from CLT20 as "essential", because the income-earning opportunities for South African franchises are limited. "The participation money from the CLT20 is worth more than we get in prize money for winning a domestic tournament," Nabeal Dien, CEO of Cobras, said. For turning up in the CLT20, teams receive the equivalent of R2.4 million (US$200,000). In comparison, South Africa's first-class competition carries a total prize money of R2 million (US 166,666).

West Indies Cricket Board
The West Indies Cricket Board loses between $300,000 and 400,000 as a whole from the tournament being cancelled. A major portion, over 65% of the money they would earn from the CLT20 was channelled towards development in the territories with the remainder retained by the board.

The WICB was also concerned about the impact on domestic teams. "It's what funds the region will be devoid of, not the board. Everything does not just go in the WICB coffers as that money has to be shared," Michael Muirhead, CEO of WICB said. "You can't just say what money the board will be missing out on."
He estimated that the funds that "the region" would no longer be privy to could be around "a couple hundreds of thousands of US Dollars."

Sri Lanka Cricket
For Sri Lanka, where the board owns all the franchises, the effect will be felt at national level. The SLC received the US$500,000 participation fee plus the amounts from players retained by IPL franchises. Around 5% of this money went into operational costs, another 5% to the players and the remaining 90% into SLC coffers.